Thursday, November 13, 2008

How many great-great grandparents did you have? If the answer is less than 16 then there must have been some inbreeding. Don't worry- an Icelandic study has found that 3rd cousin marriages are the most fecund! (although the actual reasons behind this are hotly disputed).

In any case, we are all inbred- if we weren't we'd all have more ancestors than have ever lived on the planet. I got to thinking about this after listening to iTunes U Berkeley History 4A (again) on the end of the Roman republic- specifically regarding Cleopatra (VII) - empresss of Egypt.

Although the Ptolemaic dynasty were Greek ( descendents of one of Alex-the-Great's generals) - they continued the Egyptian tradition of inbreeding. Cleo herself only had 6 great-great-grandparents ... and most of these were related! Reminds me of the hysterical "30 Rock" episode with Prince Gerhard Messerschmidt Rammstein von Haupt - the genetically deformed Habsburg prince who falls in love with Jenna. I guess the character was based on the last Habsburg king of Spain: the mentally and physically disabled Charles II.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Fascinating that somebody just made up the word 'gene' ... just as somebody else made up (co-opted) the work "quark". I guess it makes sense - these two concepts are so revolutionary that they needed new words created for them. What will be the neologism that will define our current networked era? Probably "Spam".

Monday, November 10, 2008

Probability waves- interacting and becoming particles, held together by nuclear glue, orbiting electrons, atoms and molecules, DNA unwinding, transcribing, proteins made on a ribosomal anvil, pushing out into the cytoplasm, nerves transmitting, thoughts, moving fingers made of bone, typing sentences made of language. Love, children, happiness, music. All this from a single cell- divided again and again- folded, kneaded and then pruned. Grown in my mother. The recipe now 14 billion years old. At midnight- staring out with monkey eyes at a starry sky - each point from a different age, a billion neutrinos silently streaming up from the sun through my feet. Imagining i'm pulling on the universe just as it is pulling on me.

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GILGAMESH

"Oh Mighty King, remember now that only gods are immortal- watching Humans come and go- for that is the way fate decreed on the Tablets of Destiny.So someday you will depart, but till that distant day sing, and dance, eat your fill of warm cooked food and cool jugs of beer.Cherish the children your love gave life.Bathe away life's dirt in warm drawn waters.Pass the time in joy with your chosen wife.On the Tablets of Destiny it is decreed for you to enjoy short pleasures for your short days."

WHAT YOU ARE

"Most of what you are is actually just energy trapped in a field. Your mass consists mostly of the mass of protons and neutrons, but these are in turn built up from quarks bound together into proton and neutron 'packages' by the strong nuclear force. The mass of a quark, by itself, only accounts for 3% of your total mass. The rest of your mass comes from the energy of the field which causes the strong nuclear force. You are mostly 'not there'! "